Career Development Resources

Career resources from Harvard 

• CareerConnect is a portal set up by Harvard for job, fellowship and internship search. Feel free to create a profile on this portal and don’t forget to check out e-mails from the Office for Career Advancement. 
  • Postdocs do not have access (yet) to the Career Coaching services from CareerConnect. If you think/feel like it would be a great opportunity for you to have a coach, you can have a look at ICF Find a Coach, a database of professional career/leaderships coaches that can be searched by geographic region or expertise in certain industries
• Free career events for postdocs and research associates on https://edportal.harvard.edu/calendar. 
• Check out resources and trainings through Harvard Catalyst (career mentoring program for postdocs, panels on career pathways in clinical and translational research, in industry, etc.) 
• Lots of training opportunities on the Harvard Training Portal (trainings from the Center for Workplace Development, Professional Development, Research Administration, LinkedIn learning… and a lot more!) 
• To stay up to date with all the events happening at the Harvard Chan School, you can explore the ENGAGE platform.
• Resources to make the most of your postdoc on HSPH Career Office website
• Career resources for postdocs from the Office of Postdoctoral fellows (Harvard Medical School) 

Miscellaneous career resources 

• Career & Job search resources from the Postdoc Office Consortium (HMS) 
• CareerSherpa is a cool website full of advice about Job Search 
• Helpful resources on job searching during challenging times. 
• Career advice with The Muse 

Set up an Individual Career Plan 

• Make sure that you set up your Career Development Plan & Annual Review Process with your advisor as required by the Office of Faculty Affairs of the Harvard Chan School
• The Intelligent Career (know why, how and with whom you want to work), by Sarah Blackford 
• Strengths finder, a tool that can help to clarify and label your strengths which is very helpful in communicating your headline on LinkedIn and in your resume
• The VIA Institute Character also offers a free survey and various resources for you to get to know/anchor in your own strengths
• 16 Personalities offers a free survey to have an overview of your personality (offers more personality types than the MBTI as well as loads of articles to help you reach your personal goals)
• Dare to Lead book: excellent for identifying your values, communicating them, and finding the behaviors that support or undermine them
• Science Careers set up a tool to set up an Individual Development Plan (skill, interest and value examination, determine and explore potentially suitable career paths) for academia and industry: https://myidp.sciencecareers.org/  

Applying for jobs in Academia 

• YouTube channel from NIH – OITE – workshops about finding a job in academia  
• Office of Intramural Training & Education – NIH – Guide to writing letters for a faculty position 
• Article How to design a chalk talk – the million dollar sales pitch – Eric Lee Snapp, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 2019 
• A useful website to search for Research jobs in Europe: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs  
• Check out positions on Nature Careers: https://www.nature.com/naturecareers  
• The Quick and Relatively Painless Guide to Your Academic Job: https://postdocs.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Quick%20and%20Painless%20Academic%20Job%20Search%20Guide.pdf  
• The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph. D. into a Job: https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Essential-Guide-Turning-Ph-D/dp/0553419420   
• The Academic Job Search Handbook: https://www.amazon.com/Academic-Job-Search-Handbook/dp/0812223403 
• Doing a PhD is not enough! A guide to survival in science by Peter J. Feibelmann

Transitioning to the industry 

• Your PhD has a lot of value outside of academia too! Harvard partnered with VersatilePhD to help you get prepared for a career outside of academia. Login here!
• YouTube channel from NIH – OITE – Career Development, Transitioning to industry, etc. 
• YouTube channel from CheekyScientist –  Advice about careers outside of academia  
• PhD Career Networking Group on LinkedIn – this LinkedIn group shares a lot of job postings/good information – all scientific backgrounds are welcome!
• A profile/job-matching platform created by scientists to enable other scientists to create a profile which will be matched to job offers from industry in the US: https://scismic.com/beta 
• jobscan.co to compare your resume and cover letter to the posted job description (it is important to know that first round application screening is usually done by a robot army now)
• Sweaty Palms book: has a great compilation of interview questions you might get during your job application process
• Black hole focus book: essential text for PhDs outside of academia

Writing Articles & Grants and Funding Opportunities 

• Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded by Joshua Schimel
• The Art of Grantsmanship, a guide for grant writing: https://www.hfsp.org/node/5761 
• Databases about grants & fellowships for graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty with Nature Careers 
• A very complete list of worldwide funding opportunities for postdocs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J2M_tQgoqV4ivpfEClh9qs9f2KQN2O1G3Jpda2aoHfQ/edit#gid=0 
• Postdoc fellowships in the Life Sciences with the MIT communication lab: https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/be/commkit/index-of-postdoc-fellowships-in-the-life-sciences/  
• Opportunities for Minority Postdocs: https://www.minoritypostdoc.org/resources 
• Postdoctoral Funding Opportunities (Johns Hopkins University): https://research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-opportunities/postdoctoral/ 
• Interesting resources from Sarah Blackford who wrote a book about Career Development for Researchers in Biosciences. She also has a great blog: https://biosciencecareers.org/ full of nice resources (science jobs and fundings in the US and Europe mostly) 

Online presence  

• Resources about online networking and LinkedIn, by Sabrina Woods 
• Insights about blogging, tweeting, insta-gramming and more with FromTheLabBench 

• How to make the most of ResearchGate 

Management & Leadership 

• Interesting resources about leadership, coaching and development 
• An interesting talk about Management for Scientists 
• More training opportunities on popular web-platforms: edx.org, Coursera (and the Harvard Training Portal as well!).
• Managing your time with this book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport